Abstract
This chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities related to the provision of land and infrastructure for affordable housing. It drills down on three key challenges impeding the supply of affordable housing in Africa: poor land governance and weak management systems; the multiplicity of conflicting land tenure regimes; and the rapid growth of low-density, informal residential developments, leading to urban sprawl in peri-urban areas. The chapter also argues that the provision of basic infrastructure, especially transport infrastructure, not only shapes cities, but is also an important determinant of housing affordability, particularly for low-income families.
Highlights
Land, along with the provision of bulk infrastructure, is central to any discussion on housing development in Africa
Some revenue tools that could be used to pay for infrastructure services include developer levies, land value capture allowing for user fees, taxes and public-private partnership (PPPs)
We suggest that three principal challenges currently confront the formal housing sector in Africa: poor land governance, weak property rights and tenure security owing to the multiplicity of land tenure regimes, and the growing low-density urban expansion, which raise the cost of service provision
Summary
Along with the provision of bulk infrastructure, is central to any discussion on housing development in Africa. In most African cities, the high cost of urban housing is often due to several issues including inadequate land governance policies that encourage speculative acquisitions, poor urban planning that generates urban sprawl, and the lack of critical infrastructure that has significantly increased the cost of serviced land. Long-standing cultural preferences for freestanding homes and the lack of formal high- density housing developments have accelerated urban sprawl patterns and the growth of informal settlements across many countries. This chapter attempts to describe Africa’s dysfunctional land markets for housing It is organized around four important land market phenomena that have major implications on formal sector provision of land and infrastructure for affordable housing in Africa: (1) poor land governance and administration systems; (2) implications of unclear land tenure rights and regime; (3) urban sprawl; and (4) how to increase land supply and the provision of basic infrastructure services
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